Monday, September 28, 2009

Warms your heart, doesn't it? Puts you in a festive mood? Makes you think of family, and all the good times you've had with them?

Well, you wouldn't be alone. Evidently, Geo News thought all these things too. In fact, they thought them to the extent that they used the picture in their telecasts and slide-shows and whatnot, all during the Eid holidays. And really, you can't blame their taste -- it's an incredible photograph.

Here's the problem, though: it didn't belong to them. They stole it. They took it from one of our readers, Nadir Siddiqui, a photographer who had taken it and put it up on his Flickr page, and didn't credit him or Flickr. They just used it for commercial purposes, one instance of which you can see at 0:11 of this video:

This, in the civilized world, is called stealing. In Geo's world, it's called another day at the office.

Of course, this is not exactly new for the Jang Group/Geo. In my opinion, they have truly jumped the shark in the last year. They have given an op-ed column to A.Q. Khan of all people, who used the space to spout off all sorts of nonsensical opinions on Pakistan and the world. And he was evidently bitten by the plagiarism bug while working there, to the amusement of many (including us).

The News has also given space to nutty conspiracy theorist and irresponsible fool Shireen Mazari, among others. They include on their reporting staff people like Ansar Abbasi and Hamid Mir, people who regularly either make things up, or pass off their own warped opinions in the guise of news behind the cloak of anonymous sources. And this is setting aside the sensationalist and wildly inappropriate news shows and news reports one regularly finds on Geo (though they are hardly alone in this regard).

In short, Jang/Geo steal, lie, exaggerate, and bullshit as a matter of course. If they were a person in real life, you'd hate their guts, and they would have no friends. And yet somehow despite their antics, or perhaps because of their antics, their conglomerate remains the biggest in Pakistan, when you consider the combined readership of The News and Jang, and the viewership of Geo. Their empire is built mostly on the work of their employees -- most of whom are hard-working, I am sure -- but also the work of people like Nadir Siddiqui, who are neither credited nor compensated. The only possible way such blatant cheating will end is if they are named and shamed, but even then, I won't be holding my breath.

Shireen Mazari is a proper, proper nutjob. So is most of the PTI crowd imo. When everyone jumped on Imran Khan for his, "oh noes. violence never solved anything. look at the troubles or the ltte - oops not the ltte - they were never solved with violence. they were solved with negotiations" the amount of bitchy letters sent in from the likes of Mazari and Cheema was hilarious.

As for Geo/Jang and co, they rip off not only Pakistanis but syndicated publications abroad too. It's a sight to behold how callously they do this to be honest.

i don't think this problem is geo/jang's alone. a photograph of me taken by a widely known photographer was published in dawn's magazine section last sunday and they credited the author of the article with it. music made by western bands is rarely credited when used on any television channel in pakistan simply because they refuse to pay for it. similarly, photos taken from other published material go uncited in the scrolling credits in television programs that involve visual research. good thing you're calling pakistani media on this apparently endemic affliction.

Forget about that, I heard song from Bollywood Movie "Swades"(Yeah jo desh hai mera) being played in background while showing Pakistani National Flag on this Independence day on one of the Pakistani channel. As an Indian I was surprised.

I am glad someone called them out for stealing! Poor Nadir. And unfortunately we can't even do anything about it since the media has complete control over everything. This is a bourgeois society where we (in this case Nadir) are being exploited. Pakistani media has taken corruption to another level

Although I agree that The News publishes a whole lot of crap, I do admit that its editorial pages are pretty good overall. For every Mazari, Ahmad Quraishi (thankfully both now with The Nation where they rightfully belong) and A.Q Khan that they publish they also carry some of the best names in the business -- from Ayaz Amir, to Shafqat Mehmood to Rahimullah Yusufzai to Masood Hasan to Maleeha Lodhi to Ghazi Salahuddin and more. Some of the relatively newer names (Aakar Patel, Shandana Minhas, Chris Cork, Harris Khalique, Babar Sattar, Rafay Alam, Shakir Husain, Khusro Mumtaz etc etc)are invariably worth reading. Sometimes extremely bold and controversial topics are confronted head on and issues no other paper would touch with a barge pole are tackled courageously. Perhaps the odd crappy pieces they carry are the price they have to pay for the overall boldness?The editorials are generally very well written and seem to have their heart in the right place most of the time. By comparison, Dawn seems dull overall and a touch out of date and The Daily Times too insufferably smug. Of course they carry a lot of shit but I am willing to grit my teeth and tolerate some of it as overall it is the only English paper that at least tries to give us some excitement and a fair amount of high quality writing. Am I being too forgiving?

I agree with induscreet as there are a few exceptional columnists in The News including Ayaz Amir and Masood Hasan and especially Fasi Zaka.But i think Dawn is still the best source of news in Pakistan,The Jang Group relies on sensationalism a bit too much..Dawn might seem dull,but they have the best policy..As they asked Ayaz Amir to quit Dawn when he became an MNA....http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/20071221.htm.... The News is always looking for an MNA to fill up their opinion pages.